• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, November 10, 2014

Cox Media Group is relaunching all of its newspaper Web sites, beginning with its flagship publication, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the company announced this week. Other Cox publications will follow in coming weeks, including the Austin American-Statesman,The Palm Beach Post and the Dayton Daily News.

The new design aligns the AJC’s mobile and desktop experiences, and includes more emphasis on visuals, integration of social functionality to facilitate sharing content, new neighborhood features, and special topic sections and pages devoted to recreation and leisure activities. According to Cox, the neighborhood and special topic sections will enable advertisers to target specific audience segments by location and interests.

On the advertising side, the new format will support more premium sponsorship and native advertising placements. Overall, the AJC Web site attracts over 15.5 million visits per month, Cox claims.

Like other newspaper publishers, Cox has been busy reinventing its legacy properties for the digital age. Last year Cox partnered with Adpay to create a new classifieds platform that was subsequently rolled out at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its other newspaper properties.

Also last year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution launched AJC Tickets, a ticket commerce site for local buyers and sellers of Atlanta-based live events. AJC co-branded the site with TiqIQ to offer tickets from PrimeSport, as well as TicketsNow, eBay and TicketCity. TiqIQ also works with Ticketmaster, Ticketfly and Veritix.

Valpak, another Cox Media Group property, introduced an augmented reality app that allows users to locate nearby businesses with coupons by holding their phone up, and also struck partnerships to incorporate digital coupons into mobile wallet services from Apple, Samsung, Google and Windows.